In my last blog I argued that IBM and a few other enterprise software companies were in a unique position to provide high-end BPMS products (and Cognitive Computing platforms) because they had the skills to integrate a wide variety of complex technologies. If an IT group plans to use a BPMS tool to design and the develop software for a large business prcoess application, that argument holds.
Having said that, however, I want to make the opposite argument as well. When business people become engaged in analyzing their business needs and designing new business processes, they do not need a complex tool with the ability to integrate rules, business intelligence and analytics in complex ways. Business managers need tools that help them think simply and broadly about what the business is trying to do and to lay out a high-level process to meet their organization’s needs. Tools with all of the bells and whistles that a software designer would need are too complex for business managers to use.
Unfortunately, the consolidation within the BPM market has resulted in the acquisition of the first generation of simple business modeling tools — tools like Popkin, Proforma and Nimbus — and their incorporation into packages that are too complex for business managers. Thus, even as consolidation has proceeded, the has been a steady release of new, simpler modeling tools.
In essence there are two BPM markets. One for a powerful tool that process specialists and IT developers can use to create powerful, integrated processes with large software elements, and a second market for simple, well-designed process modeling that business people can use to describe and communicate their process designs.
Leave a Reply